For a banquet of enchantment there is Lamia's, and of magical fruits, poor Laura's in "Goblin Market"; Romeo too went feasting with the Capulets—but only his eyes; so too Macbeth, but his eyes betrayed him. Bottom in his ass's ears asked only for a munch of your good dry oats, a handfull of pease, and a bottle of hay, then fell asleep before even Queen Titania could magick them up for him. As for the poor Babes, blackberries and dewberries were their last supper. These are but a few of scores of banqueting delights in poetry—but to include them all would need such a larder as Jack peeped into when he sat supping in the Giant's kitchen.
[74]. "Pigeon Holes, Stool-ball, Barley-break."
This fragment is a patchwork of the half-forgotten. "Pigeon holes" was a ball-game, played on the green, with wooden arches and little chambers as in a dovecot—a kind of open-air bagatelle. "Stool-ball" was popular with Nancies and Franceses on Shrove Tuesday. Barley-break was in Scotland a kind of "I spy," played in a stackyard, and in England a sort of "French and English," in three marked spaces or compartments, the middle one of which was called hell. And here—while we are on the subject of old and gallant pastimes—is a brief exposition of our noble and National Game of Cricket in its early days. It comes from a book with the queer title, "A Nosegay for the Trouble of Culling; or, Sports of Childhood":
"Cricket is a game universally played in England, not by boys only, for men of all ranks pique themselves on playing it with skill. In Mary-le-bone parish there is a celebrated cricket ground much frequented by noblemen and gentlemen.
The wicket consists of two pieces of wood fixed upright and kept together by another piece which is laid across the top and is called a bail; if either of these pieces of wood be thrown down by the ball the person so hitting them becomes the winner.
The ball used in this game is stuffed exceedingly hard. Many windows and valuable looking-glasses have been broken by playing cricket in a room."
It was in a cricket match in the summer of 1775, when no less than three "balls" had rolled in between a Mr. Small's two stumps without stirring the bail, that it was decided to add stump iii.
As for "tansy" (line 5), here is a recipe for it (to go with the sillabub on p. 506): "Take 15 eggs, and 6 of the whites; beat them very well; then put in some sugar, and a little sack; beat them again, and put about a pint or a little more of cream; then beat them again; then put in the juice of spinage or of primrose leaves to make it green. Then put in some more sugar, if it be not sweet enough; then beat it again a little, and so let it stand till you fry it, when the first course is in. Then fry it with a little sweet butter. It must be stirred and fryed very tender. When it is fryed enough, then put it in a dish, and strew some sugar upon it, and serve it in."
[75]. "Mary's gone a-milking."
And, according to Sir Thomas Overbury (who dipped his pen in nectar as well as ink), "A Fair and Happy Milk-maid," is "a country wench, that is so far from making herself beautiful by art, that one look of hers is able to put all facephysic out of countenance....